FLIK

Just finished listening to the 1st show on the HOF, really good stuff. Having listened to a bunch of podcast on the HOF over the past month or so this was easily the best. A lot of the others came across to me like a giant douchey circle jerk with dudes going "rah rah look how smart we are for liking wrestler A who's clearly better then wrestler B. All the people who like B are idiots with no taste" or feature a lot of arrogant "I know little to nothing about wrestler X but i'll judge him to be no good anyways" type talk. This had neither so was a nice refreshing change of pace.

On the subject of Sting, I think an interesting comp would be Bret. Bret got in no questions asked in the initial 96 class. Both had been in major mainstream promotions for about the same amount of time, both got their chance to be the anchors of their promotions around the same time though Sting had allready been in the main event mix a few years earlier then Bret was. Sting not being a big draw is something held against him but was the WWF with Bret on top from 92-96 really doing significantly better business, enough that you could count that as a plus for Bret? And if not what does Bret have over Sting? Bret's considered a better in ring talent then Sting which I don't disagree with but I also think Sting is a lot better then given credit for, enough so that I at the least wouldn't say Bret blows him out of the water by leaps & bounds. Oh....and they had the same finisher....

Court mentioning it was actually the 1st time I can recall hearing that Steph didn't like Dunn and that Dunn doesn't even work at Titan Towers but has his own seperate building a few miles down the road. Don't think there'll be much of a war since he pretty much flat out said Steph/HHH will fire him as soon as they gain the power to do so and that even Dunn himself probably know's it. Wonder if there's anyone in that company that likes him besides Vince himself....

Are you opposed to watching stuff online/on your computer? http://www.youtube.com/user/tellumyort has hundreds of matches on his channel There's a lot that pops up on diffren torrent sites from time to time to download and there's a pretty good chunk of stuff in the matches forum at DVDVR As for what to check out, here's a short list of some of the better matches i've seen 12/30/1972 Steve Veidor vs Jim Moser 1/6/1973 John Naylor vs Jacky Ricard 3/14/1973 Johnny Saint vs Jim Breaks 5/5/1973 (British Lightweight Title) Jim Breaks © vs Johnny Saint 8/15/1974 John Naylor vs Zoltan Boscik 11/2/1974 Abe Ginsberg vs Pete Curry 4/26/1975 Alan Serjeant vs Robby Baron 11/8/1975 Steve Veidor vs Al Hayes (The same Al Hayes of WWF fame) 5/21/1977 (World Lightweight Title) Johnny Saint © vs Kader Hassouni 10/8/1977 Pete Roberts & Kung Fu vs Johnny Kincaid & Butcher Bond 3/22/1980 Mick McMichael vs Vic Faulkner 3/15/1986 (World Mid Heavyweight Title) Marty Jones © vs Johnny Kincaid 5/31/1986 (World Mid-Heavyweight Title) Marty Jones © vs Bull Blitzer (aka Steve Wright, Alex Wright's dad) No Date, shouldn't be too hard to find - (The Rockers) Peter Lapaque & Tommy Lorne vs (The Fabulous Royals) Bert Royal & Vic Faulkner

....Japan. Up until 92 he was still woking New Japan reg whear he'd allready been a huge star & 3 time IWGP champ & held the tag belts, then in 93 he was working on top in UWFI and for whatever it's worth he was a main eventer in Germany for the CWA too during the early 90's. Love Sting, think he should absolutely be in but Vader blows him away by a significant margin in every way as a candidate.

I remember hearing at one time Tony Schiavone was being considered for the job Bischoff got after Watts left, anyone have more details on that. Why he didn't get it/how much if any power he had backstage.

That's some funny shit. The word is "tier", not "package". And the WWE's cut of that package would be extremely small relative to others in it like the NFL... sidebar here for a season. The NFL is likely to increase their Thursday Night schedule to either leverage: * more games on the NFL to make more fans hammer carriers to add the NFL Network * sell the new "1st half of the season" slate of games to TimeWarner to... incent them to carry the NFL Net The other key thing: the NFL Net and NBA Net *don't* want to be on a sports tier. They want to be basic so that they get a cut of ALL subs of TimeWarner, not just a cut of those who pay for the tier that the NFL Net is on. That's ESPN's deal: they're not on a special sports tier, and instead on basic... and get a hefty $$$ per total subscriber to TW or Comcast or Direct. The WWE trying to get on a tier is a... pretty fucked up business model. Lots of people just aren't going to sub to the tier. What they want to do is get on basic, like dumbass shit such as the Golf Channel is, and then create a schedule of programing that draw eyeballs. I think we've seen how well the subscriber model has worked for the WWE: 24/7 and the web. I'm pretty stunned that after 10 years of looking at this shit, this is the dumbass idea that the WWE comes up with. Fucking idiots. John On one of the recent audio shows, Meltzer had the theory that the WWE put this out thear so that they could come back with the positive feedback of al their fans that aswered saying they'd get the cannel which would look nice when it came time to negotiate. He threw out a bunch of hypothetical #'s along the lines of if the "tier" made 400 million a month and all the WWE got was 50 cents per subscriber that'd still be a large chunk of cash, like several hundred million a year which might be worth giving up a few ppvs a year

You know, i've seen this point in diffrent incarnations brought up a lot on diffrent boards the past few days and it's kinda shocking in a way. The whole "code of honor" "pure wrestling" "sports based" blah blah blah stuff was never anything more then a marketing point to differentiate themselves from "sports entertainmnt" based feds and pander to the smark crowd that hates WWE/TNA and something to use as a crutch to try and get over heels for "breaking the code." From day 1 ROH has always had plenty of promos, angles, storylines, feuds, heel managers, dudes with wacky gimmicks and other assorted shenanigans and has been about featuring all styles of wrestling from matwork to brawls to flippy shit to comedy to whatever. The very 1st segment on the very 1st show in 2002 featred 2 gay guys making out and a chick being put through a table. The fact that after all these YEARS they've still got people actually legit buying into the "we're about nothing but honorable no nonsense tech wrestling" gimmick is rather amazing actually. I almost want to give the company kudos for managing to pull that off but in a weird way it's also sorta backfired on them since they seem to have done it too well.

Doesn't surprise me actually. I know some held out hope with a "let's see whear it goes" attitude but a lot of people lost interest as soon as Punk came back 2 weeks later. And even besides that sorta bright spot, the overall poduct is still pretty weak and uninteresting.

I take this back. Ric Flair on the Cleaveland show tonight shilling a summer camp "there's 3 things I know. Wrestling, divorce and male bonding, whooo" NEW Greatest of greatness ever...

Got around to re-watching this today. I've seen it several times in the past, the action is great and speaks for itself. Just a notch below Dream Rush in that department. What I picked up more on this time was the little things and how well booked the story was. This was absolutely 100% designed to get you hyped for a Hotta/Kansai singles match, they went at it just enough to leave you satisfied and get you excited for it but held back enough as to not blow their wad. They also did a good job of setting up more OZ/Takako fun down the line. Also dug how well they kept to the heirarchy of things with Takako working as weak link of the match. It was subtle but they did a lot to further that aspect. Tak got a lot of offense in but almost none of it came by herself, almost every time it was because Hotta took down OZ or Kansai first ad then Tak came in and continued the beat down until. Also great job of keeping Kansai strong too with very few moments whear she was in significant trouble. After the events of the Fukuoka match last month Kansai was brought in to be the heavy hitter and that's pretty much what she did. Really think this is overblowing things. Aside from the mistimed arm drag nothing was that horrible looking and out of a 30 minute match the sloppy action probably amounted to like 30 seconds worth.

*WRONG* Most awesomely AWESOME entrance music EVER. Instantly knew which song this was going to be just by looking at the video title. Haven't heard it in years but it's been perma stuck in my head ever since and ocasionally i'll just randomly sing that shit around the house even now... Still recall every detail of how it came about too. Orndorff was on a big losing streak and getting all depressed about it, then 1 day a famous tv psychic in a bad curly grey wig (forget his name) appears before him to cheer him up and reimind him that he's MR WONDERFUL dag nabbit and next thing you know he's got this spiffy new song and a magic mirror and he's beating ass again. Greatest of greatness the whole thing....

On that note, I couldn't believe what a total idiot Rey was the past few months. Knew full well his leg was screwed and he was going to have to take time off, just HAD to wrestle a few more matches anyways for no good reason and then messed his leg up worse trying to do a baseball slide or something. Zero sympathy for the guy after hearing about all that. Arn's a bad example, same thing hapened to him that happened to Edge, neck problems got bad enough that he had no choice in the matter and had to stop.

I'm pretty much taking a "won't believe it till I see it" stance on this. The leap from this being an idea they float around via a small survery and something they realisticly do is a big one. Don't know what kind of #'s they pull but this is pretty much what they do in England and a few other foreign countries allready so i'd think the company would have some idea as to how that approach would work by now.

Listened to the Cornette show this mourning, basic gist of most of the highlights regarding the tv/companies future were - straight forward ROH style wrestling mixed in with a few angles, and a lot of promos and profile videos to get you interested in the wrestlers/matches. - mostly going to let the wrestlers personalities speak for themselves and not going to ask them to "tone things down" in ring wise - had the 1st set of tapings in Chicago because it's an ROH hotbed and they got 1000 or so fans but there were some technical issues with the building which caused the show to run long - having the the next 2 sets of tapings at the OVW arena because they know they won't have as many tech issues - taping the shows at diffrent locations after that - waiting a few months to see what locations they get the highest ratings in and slowly exspanding into those areas - not going into areas they don't think they can draw well in just because they've got tv thear - having the wrestlers do local media & promotional aperances for businesses in between shows - encoraging guys who aren't doing stuff like that to take outside bookings & stuff like Japan tours - planing to bring in Japan stars after they've got their own talent more established to the tv audiance - Exsanding the schedule to 3 or 4 shows per month as the year goes on. All seems pretty reasonable & modern to me, not sure how people are getting this "they want it to be like 1970's wrasslin" gloom and doom vibe off the interview myself.

Hogan I fully buy is only doing it for the money at this point. Flair I think would still want to keep going even if he didn't have like 10 ex wives and a bajillion in debt. I forget the exact quote or whear it's from but I recall Flair saying in some interview something along the lines of wanting to keep wrestling until he "turns to dust and has to be swept away" and I kinda believe him. He's been pretty public about how he never wanted his WWE retirement to begin with and that it was something they kinda forced/talked him into.

Re-watched this earlier today and I fully agree, my rundown

Yeah, i'd pick Dump as my #1 too. Just everything about her from literally the very second she comes through the curtain screams heel. Her music, her entrance, the terrorizing fans, the beating up anouncers, the army of cronies, the crooked ref in her back pocket, the look, the cheating, the pure meaness and evil of everything she does. Doesn't get any better. I'll also toss out Mitsuhiro Matsunaga as another example since I don't think he's been mentioned yet. If you look his career he actually spent most of it as a beloved face but when you take him out of an environment like W*ING or Big Japan whear he was treated like a god and for example put him in a "pure clean wrestling" environment like Battlarts against Yuki Ishikawa he's awesome as the personification of evil, representing everything the fans of that style hate. STOP THE MATSUNAGA On that note, Masa Fuchi. I'm not a reg All Japan watcher but I watched a few 92 matches a while back after having my interest peaked by the yearbook threads and came away wanting to see more Fuchi then anyone else just because he's such an awesome grumpy dickhead.

Don't really know if there's a good catch all blanket answer to the original question. Things vary so much from case to case. Still doing matches when you can longer go like you once could isn't so bad if it's say opening match on a show or a special legends match type deal or on some smaller indy card whear exspectations aren't so high. When you're trying to main event big shows in front of several thousand ppl and being watched by millions on tv and are taking up a valuable spot younger/better wrestlers could fill that's a bit diffrent. Wrestlers work hurt, fight through pain and come back from injuries, many times earlier then they should all the time. Just kind of an accepted part of wrestling. When it gets to the point whear you need massive amounts of drugs to function normally or you start risking permanent significant life time damage to your health then yeah maybe take a step back/away. Yeah, that's the story I recall as well.

I actually asked a similar question, what ppls favs were on another forum. The most recent one with Domino talking about him & Luke Gallows trip to Nigeria is easy hands down the best ep. My own personal list would have the Cassandro ep as my 2nd fav, Johnny Saint #3 and then in no particular order X-Pac, ICP, Sara Del Rey, Mad Man Pondo, Chris Hero, The Hurricane Helms/Wrestling convention live ep whear Sunny/Curry Man/Bill Apter showed up, Willie Mack, Brian Kendrick, Claudio Castagnoli, Beth Phoenix, Johnny Curtis, Zack Ryder & any of the ones CM Punk & Adam Pearce appeared on as others I thought were really great. Domino's 1st apperance, Excalibur & Luke Gallows were also pretty consensus picks among other ppl for some of the best eps. Really though, none of them are bad, I started out picking and choosing myself but then after a while I went back and listened to the whole archive and wasn't disapointed by any of them. This weeks ep with Bison Smith is pretty awesome and has a lot of interesting highlights. - Jun Akiyama hated him (Bison doesn't say why) when he first started coming over to the point whear Akiyama would turn his head away if Bison tried to even shake his hand. - Delerious teaches him yoga & meditation poses - Doesn't name names but rags on the guys from Harley Race's school who got NOAH tours as being pretty shitty and not knowing how to act in the locker room. - 1st hand account of the match whear Misawa died and a few details that atleast I personally hadn't heard before like that Misawa had been noticably exhausted and worn out more then usual for about a week previous to the match and that Misawa got hurt badly earlier in the match off a Bison/Saito double team that had Misawa laying on the floor for 5 mins before recovering and continuing the match.

Yeah this, the other stuff I have a passing interest in but could take or leave, main thing I care about it just the discussion of the matches/wrestlers themselves.

Guy who posted this on the F4W msg board listed the source as the "WrestlingVIP newsletter"

On a diff note, from the Observer site Wonder if someone's getting fired over this? It's not quite as bad as the time one of the crew messed up and accidently set The Undertaker on fire but still. Also, glad back prob is all it is since seeing Meltzer's headline of "Lawler hospitalized" I was thinking something much worse might have hap for a second, not that this doesn't suck too.

Heh, odd thing to bring up. Last I checked having money wasn't illegal. I know why it was tossed in, just in case the authorities want to pursue some "he's got all these drugs and all this money, he must be selling" argument but really, Hardy's got enough dumb shit you can nail him on without something silly like that.

*EDIT* Never mind, misread, it's early ...